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Life And Style Of William Faulkner
Essay, Research Paper

The Life and Style of William
Faulkner

William Faulkner was a writer in the
early to mid 1900?s. Faulkner was born into a life of a well-known
family and a somewhat rich family. Faulkner also has a very unique
style and this paper will show his unique style in the story ?A Rose
for Emily.?

William Faulkner was born on
September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi. Faulkner was born into
a pretty famous household. His great-grandfather, Senior John
Sactoris was part of Mississippi?s history. His great-granddaddy was
an author of several books, a lawyer, soldier, railroad builder, and
poet. He was twice acquitted of murder charges.

` ?Faulkner grew up around
traditional lore-family and regional stories, rural folk wisdom and
humor, heroic and tragic accounts of the Civil War, and tales of the
hunting code and the southern gentlemen?s ideas of conduct
(Collier?s, 1)? He also grew up in conditions of poverty.

As a child Faulkner grew up in his
hometown, Oxford, Mississippi. He went through all of grammar school
and only a few years of high school and college classes. As a young
adult Faulkner knew he wanted to be a writer. As a teenager Faulkner
wrote and illustrated homemade books.

After attending a few college classes
Faulkner entered the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War I.
When the war came to an end Faulkner went back to his hometown of
Oxford. To keep himself from becoming poor Faulkner performed many
odd jobs, some of which included a journeyman, carpenter, house
painter, fireman, night watchman, and a postman. During that time
Faulkner started writing his first book, The Marble Fawn. The Marble
Fawn, written in 1924, was a collection of largely intellectual and
derivative verse.

After publishing his first novel
Faulkner started moving around to such areas as the Bohemian Quarter
of New Orleans, New York, and all over Europe. He moved around until
he met Sherwood Anderson, and was advised to write pieces of fiction.

Sometime later Faulkner published his
second novel, Mosquitoes, which was about his life in Bohemian
Quarters of New Orleans. Two years later in 1929 Faulkner published
Sarlons. This was Faulkner?s first book to include his made up
country found in many of his stories, which was know as Yoknapatawpa
County.

Faulkner died on July 6, 1962. His
writing career lasted for three long decades and every single one of
his novels from his first to his last have all been popular and won
acclaim from many people.

Faulkner himself has a very unique
style, ?he is credited with having the imagination to see, before
other serious writers saw, the tremendous potential for dramas,
pathos, and sophisticated humor in the history and people of the
south (Short Story Writers, 293).? Faulkner has been called by many
the Literary Carpenter. By using this material and showing others how
to use this style Faulkner is credited with sparking the Southern
Renaissance. By writing about the South?s history, Faulkner changed
the American view on the people in the south. ?In undercutting the
false idealizations, Faulkner often distorted the stereotypes and
rendered them somewhat grotesque in the interest of bringing them to
three-dimensional life; and he attempted to show through social and
political presumptions of the South the portent of it?s inevitable
destruction- first through war then through an insidious new social
order based on commercial pragmatism and shortsighted lust for
progress (Short Story Writers, 293).? In this sense the new south was
shown as mainstream America.

Faulkner writes in a way that makes
it harder for the reader to understand. He uses long sentences that
challenge the reader to make out the speaker, the time, and even the
subject of the narrative. Faulkner uses stream of consciousness
interior monologues, and frequently combines time to stress his
belief that the past and present are linked together in the human
psyche. The story ?A Rose for Emily? exemplifies these points very
well.

?A Rose for Emily? is one of
Faulkner?s most critiqued stories and it is also one of his best
stories as well. It is a popular book for its elements of mystery,
suspense, and the macabre. In the story Emily Grierson murders her
husband because he cheated on her and then she sleeps with his dead
rotting carcass. The main point of the story is not her killing, but
of her relationship to the two generations of people in her town, the
first generation is known as the old guard and the second one is
known as the new generation with ?modern ideas.?

In the beginning of the story the
reader is informed that Emily is dead and the whole town goes to her
funeral. Most of the people at the funeral were part of that young
generation, and they could never really accept Emily into their
generation. To them she was the classic idea of an old fashioned
southern woman. In the story the old generation fathers relieve Miss
Emily from taxes and they send their children to take part in her
china painting classes. On the other hand, the new generation fathers
do not think it is fair that she is exempted from taxes and make her
pay, they do not allow their children to attend Miss Emily?s china
painting classes. Because Miss Emily tells the town she will not pay
the taxes and tells them to take it up with a man who has been dead
for ten years she is labeled insane by that generation. After that
she becomes somewhat of a recluse and lives in her home with her
black servant. Miss Emily then becomes a symbol of the old
generation?s values and the sins of the old fathers.

Many readers see Emily as just a
symbol of the past, but to a point that is not correct. As the story
goes on the reader finds out that she is not really part of the old
generation either. She, in fact, is part of the post war generation,
which was a defeated group that yearned for their Old World that they
once had. The reader also finds out that the new generation is
nothing but a bunch of posers, because of the way they adapted their
life to fit the American way. As the reader can see the two
generations are complicit in ignoring the real Emily and creating and
maintaining the myth of Emily as a exemplum of southern womanhood
from a lost age. As the story progresses there are two men who buy
limestone and sprinkle it around Emily?s house to get rid of the
smell of the rotting carcass, and once the smell went away the town
dropped the issue.

The story now goes to the
characterization of the slave era, the new south learns to forget the
past by forgetting that Miss Emily the recluse and murderess, and by
valorizing the romantic tableau. The new generation sees the
Greirsons as a high and mighty power; they also inherited a land
sullied with cotton gins and garbage that commemorate the old south?s
defeat.

In the end the narrator, a
townsperson himself, reveals Miss Emily?s real purpose.

She was a reminder that both
generations were guilty of the same misplaced value. Not only did
they let Miss Emily, the murderess, come into being, but also that
they covered up her crime and enshrined her in a tableau into which
they can inset themselves. There is an interbreeding of ideas between
the two groups that allow them to have such bad ideas in maintaining
the ideas of what they would like to be.

Miss Emily is a fallen monument not
only to her family but also to the ends of the two generations. The
monument is topped with death and not by the ethical evolution of the
town. The narrator realizes it was the town?s fault for Miss Emily?s
actions, because they drove her into isolation madness by treating
her bad.

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